“Oh Oh, I’m not going to make it” stories that ended well

[opnspaces]

This post is loosely inspired by the "Upgrading Brakes" post in Tow Vehicles section.

Admit it, we’ve all been there. That time you stepped on the brake pedal and thought “expletive, there’s there no way I’m going to make this”. Yet somehow you managed and the crisis was averted. We’ve probably all been there, I’m sure the events are indelibly engraved in our memories. So bring it out, tell us the story I know I’m not alone in this.

Please keep posts camping or RV related. Yes things happen in our daily commutes, but this is a camping/RV forum after all.

Also only posts where the crisis, accident, etc was averted or avoided and it ended well.

Post as many stories as you can remember.

Here’s a few of mine, they both occurred in and around San Diego mountains and deserts.

I was probably 18 at the time. I was way overloaded driving my lifted Ford Ranger with a three wheeler and camping gear in the back and a sandrail dune buggy on a trailer with no brakes. My friend and I were taking different routes out to the desert camp spot and wanted to see which route was faster. His, the RV route that all the motorhomes and trailers take. Or what I thought was more direct car route.

I drove on the S2 and turned onto Montezuma Valley Rd (The Montezuma grade) toward Borrego Springs. This is steep two lane road with many sharp turns that drops from the surrounding mountains into the town of Borrego Springs. It’s a beautiful route with many panoramic views down to the valley floor below. But with those views comes some steep and most definitely fatal drop-offs on the right side of the road.

Did I mention I was only 18 at the time? Well I thought I was a race car driver, what 18 year old guy doesn’t? I’m writing this as that 18 year old trying to give you a feel for the situation from his eyes as I remember it.

So here I am driving hard into the grade from the top, headed down and things are going well. I’m braking hard for the corners and then slamming hard through the gears coming out. I remember seeing the corner coming up, a fairly tight left hand turn with a small pull out spot that is kind of white in color on the right and then a dropoff. I stepped on the brake pedal and….. nothing! I mean the pedal was firm, but there was no indication that I was asking for brakes. With the corner coming up fast I dropped two gears into second (5 speed stick) and with that little V6 screaming in protest I stood both feet on the brake pedal and pushed with all I had. There was no stopping this train in the allotted distance. But thankfully I managed to slow enough that I made the corner albeit it with the front tires howling as they tried to keep traction on the road. The rest of the descent and trip was quite a bit slower as I kept it to lower gears and stayed off the brakes to let them cool. Oh, and I lost by 2 minutes to my friend. But I gained the knowledge that the flatter more sweeping turns route that the RV’s take was just as fast and a heck of a lot easier.

This next story is not as dramatic, but it still qualifies.

It was a Sunday and I was in the mountains driving home from a great camping trip. I was in my old 70’s Ford Bronco and towing my popup trailer. The trailer only weighs maybe 900 lbs. and of course the trailer again has no brakes. By no brakes I don’t mean failed or broken brakes. In both stories the trailers were never equipped with brakes from the manufacturer.

Anyways, I was following another car and we were maybe going 35 or 40 mph, as we were on twisty mountain roads. There was not another car in sight except for an occasional car in the opposite direction. It was an awesome spring day, about 11 am with clear blue skies and dry roads. We were coming up on a left hand sweeping turn at the bottom of a small hill that I know opens into a peaceful grassy meadow. It’s peaceful, it’s serene, and I’m happy and relaxed. Yes it’s coming up, you know it is.

As we round the turn the car in front of me immediately slams on their brakes. Now normally I would have had enough stopping distance, I really wasn’t that close. No, it wouldn’t have been a pleasant stop, but it also would not have been a panic stop. Unfortunately these old Bronco’s just don’t have the best brakes. And to top it off I had almost a thousand pounds behind me.

Again I slammed hard on the brake pedal. To this day I don’t know what caused me to do it. Maybe it was because I was now in my 30’s and had a lot more mountain and general overall driving experience. Or maybe I got lucky or I remembered the Montezuma grade from years ago. But as I was slamming on the brakes I also grabbed the shifter and pulled the automatic transmission down into second gear. Yes to this day I remember looking at the needle moving to the 2.

Time seemed to slow down and for what seemed like an eternity (it was probably really only a half a second but you know the feeling) and nothing happened. Yes the old Bronco was trying to slow down. But my stomach was already in my throat and my mind had already calculated that “Oh ****, there’s no way I’m going to stop in time, there’s just not enough room” calculation. Right about that time second gear kicked in and I went from “not going to make it” to “Oh yeah, I got this”.

So as I come to a safe stop I can finally focus on what in the heck caused the car in front of me to stop so abruptly. There, right smack dab in the middle of a 50 mph road, was a car stopped looking at a little forked buck deer in that grassy meadow. To make matters worse there was a nice wide shoulder that the person could have safely pulled onto. But instead of doing the smart thing, they decided to just come to a complete stop in the middle of the road.

Okay there you have my two stories, how about one of yours? Remember try to keep it RV or camping related if you can.

[Veebyes]

This is one that did not end well other than we were uninjured & the truck did not go over with the trailer.


Click For Full-Size Image.

[shepfly]

1966,four first yr teachers heading home for Christmas, from Miami to NW Ohio on I75 in a 63 Nova. At that time 75 ended in Corbin, KY and restarted in Bereau KY you drove on old 25 between the cities. When we arrived in Corbin it started snowing, a wet heavy snow, 30 min later all traffic stopped due to no traction and a valley ahead. We sat there and decided to creep past stuck traffic after the snow (3-4 inches) stopped. We made it thru the valley and back up the other side only to find southbound traffic at the top parked 3 & 4 vehicles wide on a two lane Rd. We kept going for over 7 miles of stopped traffic, the jamup contained several loaded school buses, a patrol car,a couple plows and an ambulance with lights on! The Toledo Blade had a story that people were still stranded there 3 days later. We arrived in Bereau at 7:30pm, 7 hrs to go 25 est miles. Get to onramp for NB 75 and it's got South bound coming up it, we're 4th car waiting to get on when a big Buick pulling a travel trailer (20+) get stuck on the ramp. He's in the wrong place at the wrong time for behind him is a Pontiac 2 door who proceeds back up and them RAM the trailer. He does this at least 4 times until the ramp is clear, the back of the trailer is busted open with Christmas presents, pots and pans, and misc. scattered on the road. The Pontiac hood is bent into an invereted V, headlites gone, and radiator pushed back into fan. Head out the side window he zooms off thru town in a cloud of steam. We got on 75N and 7 miles north drove out of any snow! Thats my story and I'm sticking to it! Dave

[RGar974417]

We were coming home from vacation towing our first travel trailer. I missed the turn for the road i wanted so we took the next road which I wasn't familiar with. So we're coming down the mountain and at the bottom of this hill there is a T. You either went left or right. I was only doing about 35 but I was pulling a 24 ft TT with a station wagon. It was me,my wife and 4 kids. Everyone saw what was going on.Nobody said a word or screamed.I think they were all praying. There was a guy in a pickup at the bottom and he saw what was happening and threw his truck into reverse. I had both feet on the brakes and they were smoking. I just barely made the turn.I saw in the news last year a motor home coming down the hill didn't make it and went through the guardrail.

[CapriRacer]

I've had 2 expereinces, neither of which involved a trailer:

I was making a left turn into heavy traffic, accelerating heavily when I realized the car that I was pulling behind had stopped and i was about to hit him in the rear. I pulled into the berm and stop about half a car length further than the stopped car. The car I pulled in front of didn't react strongly enough and hit that stopped car. Luckily, the light turned green and I left the scene.

Another was when the clutch cable broke when I went to leave a rest area. I was about an hour's drive from home and managed to get all the way home without having to stop - all the time shifting without the clutch.

[JRscooby]

One morning, looking at a few inches of snow, a fairly steep hump out of the site, I get out DW's sports car, (child sized broom, used in camper), to be sure the rear tires where on pavement when hooking up. One of the park hands ran a plow to my site, back dragged in front of my rig, then back to the entrance. For about 2 miles, I was on what I knew is a nice 2 lane road, with no tracks. Just stay between the ditches. Got to the state highway, it was snow covered, but not bad. About 60 miles of that, pretty tense, but no issue. Turn onto the ramp to the 4 lane, wet pavement, good. No traffic, better. Step up the pace, about 60 MPH my world turns to snot. Wet bell, I'm on glare ice!

[Grit_dog]

pianotuna wrote:
One winter I was storm stayed in Swift Current, SK.

When the highway opened all was going along fine.

In the distance I saw a Semi that had been pulled out of the ditch and was pointing the wrong way.

I tapped on the brakes, and nothing happened. I tried a 2nd time and the least bit of pressure locked the wheels up. There was so little friction that the antilock brakes did not work.

Then the RV started drifting towards the ditch. I turned the wheel a tiny amount and nothing happened.

Finally at about 30 kph (18 miles per hour) I felt the front wheels "grab", and I was able to steer away from the semi truck which was now just 1000 feet from me.

The rest of the trip was done at a very sedate rate.

Wow, I’m not sure which is worse....the oh sht, now it’s over, moving on, or the oh sht 30x over, unfolding in slow motion where you actually have time to consider abandoning ship altogether!

[pianotuna]

One winter I was storm stayed in Swift Current, SK.

When the highway opened all was going along fine.

In the distance I saw a Semi that had been pulled out of the ditch and was pointing the wrong way.

I tapped on the brakes, and nothing happened. I tried a 2nd time and the least bit of pressure locked the wheels up. There was so little friction that the antilock brakes did not work.

Then the RV started drifting towards the ditch. I turned the wheel a tiny amount and nothing happened.

Finally at about 30 kph (18 miles per hour) I felt the front wheels "grab", and I was able to steer away from the semi truck which was now just 1000 feet from me.

The rest of the trip was done at a very sedate rate.

[opnspaces]

Definitely some great stories, keep them coming. And Blownstang, I admit to getting goosebumps reading your post. I felt like I was right there in the truck with you as you tried to find a hole between the texting woman and the wall.

[ScottG]

MitchF150 wrote:
I think I posted this already, but this happened to me this summer in Wenatchee towing my old Prowler from my dash cam.

Truck in front of me changed lanes and then a small metal shelf lifted out of his bed, right in front of me. There was a box truck behind me in the right lane and I saw the shelf drop out and glanced at my mirror and didn't see the box truck in my way, so changed lanes as shown below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0EVPUxxMaA

Once I made the lane change, I actually accelerated, since I knew that box truck was going to be behind me and probably slamming on his brakes..

I don't actually think I hit my brakes at all during the maneuver..

Not the only one in the last 35 or so years of towing stuff, but the only one I have a dash cam of! 🙂

Mitch

Funny you should post that video. We were on that hill just after you dodge the shelf when a sheriff suddenly pulls out in front of us
from the side of the road. He straddles the center line and turns on his lights to pull someone over. I about shoved our whole truck and trailer up his backside as I laid on the horn. At the last second he see's us and darts out of the way.
I had the dash cam going but didn't keep it. Would have made great evidence.

[jplante4]

I've had the cruise control refuse to kick off a few times trying to stop for a light. Makes for an interesting stop.

The scariest incident was a TomTom selected route through the Catskills to West Saugerties. This was before I knew about shortest route vs. fastest route and RV friendly GPS apps. The road is a 13% downgrade, lane-and-a-half gravel road in my 28 foot gasser. About half way down I was smelling brakes. Stopped and let things cool off, then just went down in 1st gear, stopping on the flats. I didn't know it at the time, but only my front brakes were working.

All I could think was "Jeez, I hope there's not a 10 foot bridge at the bottom of this".

[blownstang01]

pasusan wrote:
We had 2 very scary incidents a few years ago on the same trip, the same road. We were going south on I-81 in Virginia driving our Bronco and trailer with lots of traffic - mostly semi trucks.

The first one - we were in the right lane behind a flat bed truck with a load. All of the sudden his huge white tarp blew off and was floating in the air ready to wrap us up including the windshield. I'm thinking we are done - how could we even come to a safe stop without being able to see? Luckily there happened to be an opening in the left lane and dh whipped us over there and we lived. Don't know what happened to that tarp or traffic behind us...

The second one was later that day and we were in the left lane. Pickup truck in front of us with no tailgate. Case of beer falls off the back right in front of us. It held together really well - landed upright. I'm thinking OMG - there goes the oil pan, the exhaust system and then the trailer's tanks and who knows what else... Again dh was able to whip over into the other lane and avoid the catastrophe. Don't know who ended up running over that case of beer...

I am so glad we have a Hensley hitch. And that my hubby has quick and safe reactions. 🙂


I've also got one of those mountain road and brakes stories with my first car (a '63 Falcon) in the Colorado Rockies - but you all know how that went...

I have a real Love/Hate relationship with RT81. As in I Love to Hate it..

[pasusan]

We had 2 very scary incidents a few years ago on the same trip, the same road. We were going south on I-81 in Virginia driving our Bronco and trailer with lots of traffic - mostly semi trucks.

The first one - we were in the right lane behind a flat bed truck with a load. All of the sudden his huge white tarp blew off and was floating in the air ready to wrap us up including the windshield. I'm thinking we are done - how could we even come to a safe stop without being able to see? Luckily there happened to be an opening in the left lane and dh whipped us over there and we lived. Don't know what happened to that tarp or traffic behind us...

The second one was later that day and we were in the left lane. Pickup truck in front of us with no tailgate. Case of beer falls off the back right in front of us. It held together really well - landed upright. I'm thinking OMG - there goes the oil pan, the exhaust system and then the trailer's tanks and who knows what else... Again dh was able to whip over into the other lane and avoid the catastrophe. Don't know who ended up running over that case of beer...

I am so glad we have a Hensley hitch. And that my hubby has quick and safe reactions. 🙂


I've also got one of those mountain road and brakes stories with my first car (a '63 Falcon) in the Colorado Rockies - but you all know how that went...

[blownstang01]

I'm going to "brake" the rules (get it....he he). My story wasn't a camper, but I was towing a 40' gooseneck race car hauler.
Towing from Upstate NY to Epping NH for a X275 race with my F350 SuperDuty, 7.3 hopped up Diesel and a 40' Featherweight trailer. All loaded with race car and equipment I was towing around 12,000 lbs, and about 18,000 total. The truck had a western hauler bed made out of 1/8" steel and was HEAVY. Anyway, even with tip top brake pads and shoes on the truck and trailer, I always thought the brakes were marginal especially at highway speeds.
So, my dad and me are towing along @ 65 mph with traffic and came to the I84-I495 split towards Boston. I was in the right lane and a woman drove by us in the passing lane texting on her phone and I immediately thought, good thing she's in front of me in case I need to stop as traffic was picking up immensely.The highways merge from one set of 2 lanes into 4 lanes with the 2 additional lanes coming in from our right. With the heavy traffic coming on my right, I moved over into the left lane ....1/8 mile or so behind texting woman. We came around a curve and because she had been distracted she had to do basically a panic stop as the merging traffic had bottlenecked in front of her( I always watch the tail light of the car in front of me entering blind areas...doesn't work well when they have to panic stop, lol ). So here we come probably close to 70 mph barreling down on essentially stopped traffic.To make matters worse the area where the bottleneck was happening was on the onset to a flyover bridge, so imaging the left side shoulder disappearing and an armco barrier arriving from my left and tapering to the bridge. I go into a full on panic stop, brake pressure couldn't get much higher, I set the left side of the truck on the shoulder as I was approaching the stopped traffic. Now I am literally next to the car in front of us back by their left rear door and coming fast to the armco that had started way down in the median and is "V-ing" up to the bridge where you end up with about 18" of shoulder. My plan was to hit the guardrail first (at this point I was only a couple inches away from the rail on my left) and try to minimize the damage inflicted to the cars in front of me. I fully expected to take out the texting car, the one stopped in front of her and possibly one in front of that.By the grace of God the right hand traffic had slowed just enough to have some space in it and at the last second the texting car, the one in front of her and the one in front of him all dove to the right lane simultaneously as they saw the wreck coming. I eased the rig off the guardrail just in time to look in my left mirror and see the rear of the trailer miss the rail by what seemed like thousandths of an inch. This all happened in seconds, no time to talk, yell, tell my dad to hold on, nothing. When I whipped it back in the driving lane it was a good minute before dad or I said a word. And I'm pretty sure the first words were regarding the smell (and smoke) coming from the brakes. I drove for another 15-20 miles to let the brakes cool before stopping at a rest stop. Thought I was going to puke, Still not sure to this day how we got out of that one, but it was a real eye opener about traffic distance. Luckily I was always adamant about setting up my brake controller to not lock up the trailer brakes. Too close.

[Grit_dog]

If this thread about oh sh!t moments isn't just about towing a camper and brakes, I have a few, or maybe a dozen lol.
Only a couple with the camper on.
1 was not horribly dramatic after the fact, but we got trapped/chased between tornados dropping in MN a few summers ago and it was pretty hairy for an hour or 2 dodging funnel clouds, 3 phones going with maps, live radar and some heavy metal music just to keep the pace up!

Thankfully the first almost accident was also uneventful. Last summer almost home from our week long summer vacation. Camper on the truck, boat in tow (bout 6000 lbs), come around the corner on our local county road, into a shady patch, couple cars up stopped abruptly, old beater Chester the molester van in front of us hammers the brakes, barely has brake lights (and hard to see coming out of the setting sun into the shade I'm sure), didn't see the cars braking in front of him, becasue, Van.
I wasn't going to totally stop in time, but the shoulder (with deep bar ditch beyond it) looked kinda wide enough.
I just whipped the wheel, jammed the camper past the van without touching it. Dropped a couple gears at the same time and dropped the throttle to yank the trailer straight as it hit gravel and was sliding towards the ditch. Was amazed we didn't at least trade paint!